Why the Wikipedia Project Will Fail

author: reader

At one point I thought it was great. Now I realize it's often a sick place for government, military, rightwing and corporate shills to control a high-google-ranking message. Pages which are not high-profile are still good things because they don't need to be 'monitored' and 'protect' the official version of events - put out by the Bush Administration!

and even one person whose efforts to debunk all 'conspiracy theorists' as lunatics extended onto a Democracy Now program, the only one to ever take on 9/11, where David Ray Griffin was subjected to a trashing by him (Chip Berlet).

Chip Berlet, "leftist" professional anti-conspiracist who defends the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, calls oilempire webmaster "essentially an industrious rumor-mongerer with a penchant for conspiracy theories"
http://www.oilempire.us/berlet.html

Ford Foundation funds Berlet

www.fordfound.org/grants_db/view_grant_detail.cfm?grant_id=178283
------------------
Organization: Political Research Associates
Purpose: To study the college and university campus leadership and outreach programs of major national organizations and social movements and their relationship to political environment on campuses
Location: SOMERVILLE, MA
Program: Peace and Social Justice
Unit: Governance and Civil Society
Subject: Civil Society
Amount: $ 175, 000
Year: 2002
------------------

'Political Research Associates - a liberal / progressive / left non-profit that claims that Bush is innocent of complicity in 9/11'

This page insinuates that the "9/11skeptics" movement largely consists of anti-semites, far-right fanatics and holocaust denial people. Yes, those sites do exist, but one could make a very good case that several of them are "false flag" operations to provide rhetorical ammunition to attack the idea that the Bush regime allowed 9/11 or gave it technical assistance to ensure it succeeded.

PRA has resisted numerous opportunities to discuss the credible evidence that 9/11 was not a surprise attack, refusing to discuss:

* prior warnings by allied governments
* warnings to political, military and corporate officials to get out of the way
* the NORAD wargames that confused the Air Force response
* the CIA / NRO wargames on 9/11
* the motivations of Peak Oil and "Homeland Security"
* anthrax attacks on the Democrats and passage of the Patriot Act

If the racists on the web didn't exist, groups like PRA would have to invent them.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Those are who essentially control the content of the wikipedia page which allows questioning of the official version of events on 9/11 - they support eachothers changes while deleting anything that disagrees, and are involved in maintaining the title page as the pejorative 'conspiracy theories' rather than allowing anything else.

The players shift, but they are essentially of the same ilk.

And yet, the lie of 9/11 is exposed in the first paragraph of the page by the fact that the official story defenders have to provide links to their own debunking of the 'conspiracy theories,' but -- get this! -- won't allow any links to either the counter debunkings - or - anything they consider a 'conspiracy'!

That's how afraid they are, how hard they are needing to try to keep out the questioning. The page on the 'September 11th 2001" cannot allow any questioning of the official version AT ALL - only 2 sentences to refer and deride the 'conspiracy theories.' But the 'conspiracy theories' page must have a debunking of all the theories - and a sandwiching in with UFOs and paranormal - right in the
first paragraph . . . not even just in name, but with links!

Here's a typical excerpt from the discussion on there:

QUESTION:
"What do you think about this possible new title:

'9/11 skepticism and conspiracy theories'

It would mention both POV and leave the reader free to judge himself what in the article is a conspiracy theory and what is just sketpticism. What do you think?"--Pokipsy76 08:56, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

ANSWER:
"Conspiracy theories and legitimate criticisms are two separate topics; combining them into a signle article which fails to distinguish between the two would represent a loss of information." Peter Grey 15:26, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

"Whitedust is running an article which claims that lobbyists for Wal-mart have successfully waged a war against a fair viewpoint on Wikipedia's Wal-mart page. From the article: "Although Wikipedia maintains a 'Neutral Point of View' (NPOV) policy, the Wal-mart page is highly biased. Additionally, all criticism has, contrary to policy, practice, and the general opinion of those concerned, been moved to a Debates Over Wal-mart section. Even that page has noticeable resistance to negative points of view about Wal-mart."

I have found Wiki to be a great source of information. The information they have on 9/11 seems pretty reasonable. If someone had no knowledge and had to write a report, they could go here, follow a large number of links to a wide variety of information, including details about alternative theories. Just because they don't list your favorite theory as the prime cause doesn't mean Wiki is biased or flawed.

i agree with the previous poster- wikipedia is an excellent open source of information.

i think the fact that the 9/11 site is locked says more about fascist conspiracy-mongers than anyone else. no conspiracy but my conspiracy is the truth, and anyone who doesn't believe it happened the way i said it did is evil.

although i don't any page should ever be locked on wikipedia, and that is concerning.

If you're searching for info on, for example, baking soda, Wikipedia can be an excellent resource. However, if you knew nothing of for example, Michael C. Ruppert, and went to the site for info, you would see him presented as a "conspiracy theorist" in the first paragraph, before his work as an LAPD officer working to expose CIA narcotics trafficking (proven fact, not conspiracy theory) or any of his books or other works are mentioned. You would probably get the wrong idea, if your first source of info was Wikipedia. Seems fishy to me that the "official story" of 9/11 is presented as fact, but all the alternate, much better supported theories as "conspiracy theory."

A number of 'Wikipedians' have left wikipedia citing the above problem (with locking pages because of vandalism, or at outside requests) and started their own wiki - wikitruth.info. They claim that the person in charge of Wikipedia is hellbent on boosting their own credibility and censoring wikipedia. Check out their wiki for more information.

see that wikitruth site. The "founder" of Wikipedia was a (CIA?) pornographer/photgrapher website owner. How such a dude got it into his head to found a non-profit encyclopedia and then get trumpted as the voice of authority is pretty obvious to me. The whole wikipedia operation, is probabaly a government spin off IMHO. Of course there are lots of people not involved in that level of it. That's what makes it work. Though it is the core people who endlessly clip the Skull and Bones articles, the Ruppert articles, the 911 articles, as well as even the founder guy stepping in and freezing some articles, that pretty much point to a good idea with an evil center...

Ah, Wikipedia: No true believer in the democratic promise of the Web can fail to gladden at the very mention of this grand experiment&#65533;the universal encyclopedia "anyone can edit"!&#65533;or fail to have noticed, by now, what a fucked-up little mockery of that promise it can sometimes be. If you've been keeping tabs at all, for instance, it won't surprise you to learn that disaffected Wikipedia veterans have started a splinter site, wikitruth.info, for airing "censored" Wikipedia articles and witty, excoriating analysis of the petty tyrannies and ugly infighting that thrive behind the scenes there. Nor should it surprise you that Wikipedia's murky powers-that-be initially forbade any article about Wikitruth, invoking administrative privilege to delete the first such article within minutes of its posting. Hell, real insiders won't even blink at the official reason for Wikitruth's exclusion from what aspires to be, per Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, "the sum of human knowledge": Not libelous, not inflammatory, not even full of shit, the site was deemed, simply, "not notable."

For the rest of us, of course, that needs some explaining. Not notable? Wikipedia hosts approximately three jillion full-page articles about local high schools, complete with alma mater lyrics, and it can't make room for a critical look at its own practices? Perversely enough, though, "notability" has indeed become a byword for Wikipedia's freelance fact police, who delete at will whatever they think might worsen the site's smoldering reputation as a trivia dump. In practice, of course, this only aggravates the problem, filtering out any topic that doesn't rate at least a few hundred Google hits&#65533;and consequently weighting the content toward Klingon grammar and other typical Web fodder. Can the Wikipedian hive-mind even recognize these internal contradictions? Will it self-correct in time to save Web democracy from itself? Maybe, but you might want to stay tuned to Wikitruth for the answers.

Yesterday they deleted and entire section of the 9/11 Conspiracy theories page called 'Intelligence Issues.' Why? Here's the rationale provided by the person who deleted the section:

"It's not that they aren't verified, it's just that they're basically "random crap.""

That's the level of the people who are controlling wikipedia. Below follows the larger discussion. You can see the person trying to keep the information is being overwhelmed because they are deleting everything or asking for citations on things like which theorists think Building 7 was a demolition, etc., because then without a citation they can delete it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:9/11_conspiracy_theories

I'm not really sure how to go about fixing it, but as they stand now, the sections "Intelligence Issues"[9] and "Suggested Motives or Hidden Warnings"[10] are just a recounting of erroneous facts without mention of anyone implying that these facts meant anything.--DCAnderson 20:17, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I would say bring them to the talk page and try to get them verified and/or attributed. Or put { { fact } } tags on them. Kevin Baastalk 21:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not that they aren't verified, it's just that they're basically "random crap." What I mean by that is, they aren't being mentioned by any source as "evidence of a conspiracy," they're just presented as "interesting trivia." (Hmm, That's a lot of quotation marks.)--DCAnderson 21:06, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

P.S. One of the problems with this article is how long it is, and one of the reasons given for this is the large amount of Original Research it contains.--DCAnderson 21:08, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

If there's anything in the article that is not properly attributed and referenced, then a cite tag should be put on it. regarding how long the article is, i agree, and other here agree, which is why the article was split before. but others disagree that the article is too long, and merge the splits - so we're kind of at a stand-off there. Kevin Baastalk 21:16, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

This is complete bullshit. I have a job and a life so I can't sit here and look for citations 24/7 but you don't seem to have anything better to do other than sit around and ask for them while deleting material. And as an example, the allegations about building 7 are completely pervasive among the theorists literature and it would have taken you about 2 seconds to google something good up but you obviously were not interested. Unless I can get some kind of good explanation from you which I highly doubt, I will no longer be able to assume good faith and I will report you to whoever deals with this kind of bullshit. SkeenaR 21:10, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not be taken seriously on political charged historical debates

Wikipedia is, as mentioned by other commentors in this thread, and great and wonderful concept, but woefully mismanged and censored to the hilt. Case in point are some comments I made on the JFK assasination entry for Oswald's visit to Mexico city. The section was missing key and relevant information about various doubles being caught on camera down there posing as Oswald. This is verified fact as discovered by the HSCA in the late 70's. I included a link to the Lopez report which outlined and detailed the annomolies. I went back later to find out the section had been removed and the entry locked from editing due once again to "vandalism". At this point I realized that any contraversial historical issues would be affored no leway, even when the US government itself has produced reports and later investigations to the contrary. If you want info. on bumble bees or orchids go here, but don't expolre history here, it is a whitewash on the order of the 9/11 commission, the Warren commission, and the BCCI investigation. Don't be daunted by the censorship of this suppossed open forum. Just like many other resources and so called institutions of free thinking, it is meant to cause illusion and fray the the dialouge in the alternative history sub culture. Just remember the official explination for 9/11 is only a theory, just like the single bullet theory. Keep questioning and analyzing honestly, without overly emotionalizing the issues. Keep pulling the curtain back, eventually the dimented man behing the scences will one day be revealed.

I agree with the criticisms of Wikipedia here. I think the most important thing to do is to have a strong competitor Wiki-encyclopedia online that mirrors all the run-of-the-mill scientific stuff but has an altogether different editorial policy on issues like this. There is no doubt at all Wikipeia has failed the world internet community when it comes to a great many topics and pours on a bucket of stomach-churning hyper-orthodox nonsense even worse than the mainstream media is capable of. Many articles on Wikipedia are so bad they almost unreadable.

They do the same thing on all forums these days. Daily Kos for example is notorious. "Kos" himself has banned discussion of it from his site and thanked all the "volunteers" for patrolling against it. This just goes to show that 9-11 truth has to diversify its tactics away from the Internet as well as on it. Even when the pools they post go overwhelmingly against the official lies, which they dismiss as "freeping".

If a secretive government agency wanted to mess up the attempts to rebuild the progressive movement, they would send conspiracy theorists to rallies, have them create mamouth hysterical websites full of easily debunked rumors, and direct them to Wikipedia where their efforts would be opposed, leading to complaints on Indymedia sites.

If a secretive government agency wanted to mess up the attempts to rebuild the progressive movement, they would send conspiracy theorists to rallies, have them create mamouth hysterical websites full of easily debunked rumors, and direct them to Wikipedia where their efforts would be opposed, leading to complaints on Indymedia sites.

>When you told DemocracyNow listeners
>that you can't find the Pentagon witnesses on the iternet
>"because they're not there",
>you were lying, Chip.

Never said it. Check the transcript. I said that one widely quoted witness, Dave Winslow, a radio reporter, was suggested by a conspiracist to have been a phantom hoax, because the conspiracist could not find evidence that Winslow existed after a search of the Internet. Winslow is a radio reporter. His reports are not posted on the Internet. It took me only a few minutes to verify the employment of Mr. Winslow. This is the type of sloppy--and frankly incompetent--"research" employed by some conspiracists.

False. Never said it. I think the government should make all evidence available to the public in some way.

>What is in the online witness reports that you don't want people to read?

Nothing, since the assumption is based on a false claim, and evidence of a failure to employ proper research techniques and the use of a fallacy of logic.

>Is it the gray Naval electronic warfare aircraft that accompanied flight 77 to the Pentagon?

The vast majority of witnesses reported seeing a commercial aircraft. A few said it was a small aircraft. Fewer still said it looked like a missile. How many people actually reported a second aircraft was "following" flight 77? There is no evidence--not a shred-- that it was a "gray Naval electronic warfare aircraft that accompanied flight 77 to the Pentagon." That is a hyperbolic leap of conclusion with no basis in facts--only speculation.

There are people who need to be held accountable for their failures and incompetence on 9/11. There should be indictments for malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance; and for the sloppy coverup of these monumental failures after the fact. Why waste time on incompetant research, logical fallacies, and hysterical speculation when the easily-documented facts are damning enough? See the new James Ridgeway book: The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11.

1. The initial government response: Why was Cheney running the country on 9/11? Where was Donald Rumsfeld, commander of the US armed forces? Why didn't American Airlines immediately alert the FAA headquarters and the military at 8:20 when the airline first learned from flight attendants onboard that a hijack was underway?
2. The ignorance of the FBI and CIA: With Al-Qaeda firmly on the radar for years, why were they unable to see this coming?
3. The failings of the FBI's translation department: Why wasn't the Bureau set up to decipher the transmissions within its grasp?
4. The role of Pakistani secret intelligence: As the attacks were planned in Afghanistan, who was watching and who was invested?
5. The 9/11 Commission's investigation: Why weren't even the most obvious questions addressed?

note that someone already has their "form letter disinfo" read for us! By ol Chip Berlet. Well it's time to out ol Chip as a government disinfo guy:

"
I think the real story was how does Chip Barlet get implanted onto any program about 9-11--particularly when Chip Barlet has admitted secret police state intelligence meetings--designed for defamation intent--of which he was a part.
"
and his real name is a morph of the founder of the CIA, John Foster (Dulles) Berlet.

in the disinfo peddling Chip Berlet on 9-11, trashing the popular books of the author David Ray Griffin when he was "set up" on Democracy Now with a fake attack, when ol Chip loudly criticized him for a totally minor point of fact that happened after the book he wrote was published.

"However, at the last minute, Goodman abruptly and without explanation changed the format of the show from an interview to a "debate," and brought in long-time "anti-conspiracist" Chip Berlet. Berlet is not an expert on 9/11 research, and his group, Political Research Associates, is an alleged "Left" organization that is funded in part by the Ford Foundation. (It is interesting to note that "Chip" Berlet's full name is John Foster Berlet. He was named after John Foster Dulles who, with his brother Allen, designed the CIA for Harry Truman in 1947, and played a prominent role in smuggling Nazis into America to help build the post-WWII American "Defense" and Intelligence apparatus)."
http://tampaindymedia.org/bin/site/templates/default.asp?area_2=imc/open%20newswire/2005/Jul/4140.22607421875.dat

In a 1998 book that was subsidized by the MacArthur Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, entitled THE COLOR OF TRUTH: MC GEORGE BUNDY AND WILLIAM BUNDY: BROTHERS IN ARMS, a contributing editor of Katrina vanden Heuvel's NATION magazine, Kai Bird, recalled that in June 1968, then-Ford Foundation President McGeorge "Bundy arranged fellowships totaling $131,000 for eight members of" the mysteriously-slain Robert F. "Kennedy's campaign staff."

Bird also noted that recipients "included Frank Mankiewicz ($15,000 for a study of the Peace Corps in Latin America), Adam Walinsky ($22,200 for a study of community action programs) and Peter Edelman ($19,090 for a study of community development programs around the world)."

In recent years Peter Edelman has been sitting on the board of a foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, which subsidizes the alternative media work of Chip Berlet's Political Research Associates [PRA] group. In 2002, for instance, Peter Edelman's Public Welfare Foundation gave a $50,000 grant to Political Research Associates to provide "general support for research center that collects and disseminates information on extremist groups and provides information and training to local, state, and national organizations working to counter extremist activity."

PRA's form 990 also indicates at least $90,000 in additional grant money was given to Political Research Associates by Peter Edelman's Public Welfare Foundation between 1993 and 1996; and in 1999, another grant of $50,000 was given to the Political Research Associates group by the Public Welfare Foundation.

Prior to working as a staffperson for RFK and then receiving his Ford Foundation fellowship from former National Security Affairs advisor Bundy, Public Welfare Foundation board member Edelman worked as a law clerk to a Supreme Court Justice named Arthur Goldberg. According to the 1982 book Rooted In Secrecy: The Clandestine Element in Australian Politics by Joan Coxsedge: "Arthur Goldberg, the General Counsel of the CIO engineered the expulsion of the Left from this organization...After the left-wing purge of the CIO, Goldberg worked to achieve union with the conservative American Federation of Labor [AFL] headed by rabid anti-communist and long-time CIA stooge, George Meany, and what was left of the CIO."

Public Welfare Foundation board member Edelman is also both the political godfather/rabbi of U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton and a former Clinton Administration official. According to the Center for Responsive Politics' web site, Public Welfare Foundation board member Peter Edelman also gave two campaign contributions, totalling $1,500, to Hillary Rodham-Clinton's campaign on September 26, 2000 and another $1,000 campaign contribution to Senator Rodham-Clinton's campaign on November 9, 2000. Marian Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund NGO also gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to Hillary Rodham-Clinton on November 9, 2000.

In the late 1990s, the Massachusetts-based Political Research Associates [PRA] was also given a $120,000 grant by the San Francisco Foundation. The board of trustees and/or the investment committee of the San Francisco Foundation has included the following members of the Bay Area Establishment in recent years: 1. Levi Strauss Foundation Board Member Peter Haas Jr.; 2. Advent Software Inc. Chair and U. of California-Berkeley Foundation board member Stephanie Marco; 3. Equidex Inc. Chair and former U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg James Hormel; 4. Oakland Private Industry Council CEO Gay Plair Cobb; 5. Brookings Institute Trustee Emeritus and U. of California-Berkeley Foundation board member F. Warren Hellman; 6. Stanford University Trustee Leslie Hume; 7. Pacific Gas & Electric [PG&E] Chief Finance Officer Kent Hardy; 8. Seneca Capital Management Founder Gail Seneca; and 9. Foundation for Chinese Democracy Chair/President Rolland C. Lowe.

In addition, the San Francisco Foundation presently controls over $695 million in assets and takes in about $15 million a year in investment income from its corporate stock portfolio.

At least $11,000 in politically partisan campaign contributions have also been made by a Jean Hardisty of Political Research Associates since 1992, according to the Center for Responsive Politics web site. On November 15, 1999, for instance Ms. Hardisty gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. And on September 12, 2000, Ms. Hardisty gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to KidPAC.

In the acknowledgment section of the 1995 Eyes Right! book which Chip Berlet edited, the Establishment Foundation-sponsored Political Research Asociates executive wrote: "An extra tip of the hat to Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive for his special assistance."

Coincidentally, in recent months Berlet joined PROGRESSIVE magazine editor Rothschild in attempting to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers, while apparently failing to do much political research into possible links between the Ford Foundation, the Trilateral Commission, the Carlyle Group and/or the Bush White House.

In other words, just another example of psyop left gatekeepers connected to the very criminals in power.
Commentary: WORT
Re: PDA's techniques are very police state like, clandestinism and denunciation
by shearing the sheeple
(No verified email address) 11 May 2005

Like Chip Barlet does, are you really part of "the left" if you meet in secret with the US political police to plan defamation stratgies? More on the so called "expert" about to be thrown at you on WORT.

Numerous researchers have pointed to signs of covert collaboration between Berlet and the right-wingers he professes to oppose:

"The ADL does not hail from any particular portion of the left-right political spectrum. Such a classification is irrelevant once a group becomes a private intelligence agency, as then they generally inbreed with their adversaries and mutate into a peculiar political animal. John Singlaub's Western Goals, and Political Research Associates (PRA) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, both extremely tiny compared to the ADL, are two additional examples of this phenomenon. All three groups identify with certain constituencies as a flag of convenience: the ADL with the Jewish community, Western Goals with the right, and PRA with the left. But by using the same methods of collecting information -- garbage surveillance, infiltration of target groups, and the use of guilt-by-association in their propaganda -- each of these three groups has perverted itself with clandestinism and denunciation for its own sake.

This opinion of mine is based on statements from John Rees {formerly of Western Goals and a person with extensive computer files on the left), Chip Berlet of PRA (formerly a BBS operator, with extensive files on the right), and testimony from Mira Boland of the ADL (extensive files on everyone). All admit to attending one or more secret meetings in 1983-1984 with U.S. intelligence operatives such as Roy Godson, representatives from intelligence-linked funding sources, and journalists such as Patricia Lynch from NBC....

I think the real story was how does Chip Barlet get implanted onto any program about 9-11--particularly when Chip Barlet has admitted secret police state intelligence meetings--designed for defamation intent--of which he was a part.

Chip Berlet of the CIA chimes in the quote above: "One of the people that Griffin relies on is this -- is a researcher named Holmgren, who goes into great lengths say that he can't find this witness, Dave Winslow. [THE SET UP] He went on to say that Dave Winslow probably doesn't exist and if he does, he should come forward. Dave Winslow is an A.P. Radio reporter. [THE RELEASE] If you pick up the "Washingtonian magazine" for September, 2002, there's a picture of Dave Winslow and an interview of what he saw. That's the substandard research being relied on here."

David Ray Griffin could have honestly responded:

Actually since Holmgren's article was only published in June 2002, Chip--and what you cite comes from September 2002--it's a totally bogus analysis or complaint without substance. By launching into discussing Holmgren with this completely contrived smear, what was your intention? How could Holmgren had access to September 2002 documentation in June 2002? How is that an important point to make, Chip? Who knows perhaps, Chip, you even intentionally handpicked this out of the Holmgren article and then they went to the trouble of arranging a highly publicized interview several months after Holmgren's article came out--intentionally handpicking someone Holmgren was unable to find using the huge Lexis-Nexis in June 2002 for highlighting Dave Winslow shilling later. Then you come on Democracy Now! and claim to "complain about the level of analysis" that Holmgren didn't integrate the September 2002 evidence into his June 2002 article--that's really the very low standard of observation that you are shilling about Chip: so you are asking really: "Why didn't Holmgren read the September 2002 article for his June 2002 witness examination article?" Berlet, you works yourself up over something that couldn't ever have occurred, and you know it.

Berlet's low brow strategies are strangely reminiscent of the idiots sent around here at PIMC to attempt to convince people that their ability to put two and two together sometimes equals zero..if Bush says it equals zero. hee hee

Just as rome wasn't built in a day, it wasn't destroyed in a day. Keep Chipping away at it though, it's really going to give away all at once when it goes.

see this:
20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA
author: Angry Girl
There is no democracy in America, we live in a dictatorship.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/11/328450.shtmlConspiracy! It's not just your grandma's conspiracy theory anymore. It's your life.

4.

or this for many of your parent's life:

Feminist Gloria Steinem of the CIA: "Ms. Emmanuel Goldstein" attracting/guiding dissent
author: astounding, as not seen on TV
...writer and consulting editor for Ms, which she cofounded in 1972--and CIA background. She became a media darling due to her CIA connections. MS Magazine, which she edited for many years was indirectly funded by the CIA. Steinem has tried to suppress this information, unearthed in the 1970's by a radical feminist group called "Red Stockings", which she was actually observing /witnessing. In 1979, Steinem and her powerful CIA-connected friends, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post and Ford Foundation President Franklin Thomas prevented Random House from publishing it in "Feminist Revolution." Nevertheless the story appeared in the "Village Voice" on May 21, 1979.

'In 1958, Steinem was recruited by CIA's Cord Meyers to direct an "informal group of activists" called the "Independent Research Service." This was part of Meyer's "Congress for Cultural Freedom," which created magazines like "Encounter" and "Partisan Review" to promote a left-liberal chic to oppose Marxism. Steinem, attended Communist-sponsored youth festivals in Europe, published a newspaper, reported on other participants, and helped to provoke riots. One of Steinem's CIA colleagues was Clay Felker. In the early 1960's, he became an editor at Esquire and published articles by Steinem which established her as a leading voice for women's lib. In 1968, as publisher of New York Magazine, he hired her as a contributing editor, and then editor of Ms. Magazine in 1971. Warner Communications put up almost all the money although it only took 25% of the stock. Ms. Magazine's first publisher was Elizabeth Forsling Harris, a CIA-connected PR executive who planned John Kennedy's Dallas motorcade route.'
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/02/310075.shtml